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Short story or marathon?

ready to runIs writ­ing a short sto­ry very dif­fer­ent than writ­ing a novel­la or a nov­el? My own expe­ri­ence sug­gests the answer is no. Good writ­ing is good writ­ing, and the goal is to achieve qual­i­ty no mat­ter what you write. But sure­ly, you say, there must be some dif­fer­ences when com­pos­ing these dif­fer­ent forms. Actu­al­ly, in my opin­ion there is, but again, not in the writing.

The dif­fer­ence lies in the con­cep­tion of the sto­ry you wish to relate. That is, when I begin, the length of the sto­ry pro­vokes a dif­fer­ent way of think­ing about my story.

When I thought of writ­ing Crispin, the Cross of Lead, I thought of it as a mul­ti-vol­ume sto­ry, and almost imme­di­ate­ly con­cep­tu­al­ized what the four vol­umes would be. (Well yes, the fourth vol­ume has nev­er been writ­ten, but I still know what the plot of that fourth vol­ume is, and I even know the last moments of the tale. Some­day…) When I wrote Sophia’s War, the over­all arc of the sto­ry was broad­ly defined in my head, right from the first page. Even when I wrote City of Orphans, I had the over­all com­plex­i­ty of the sto­ry in my head. No, by no means did I have it all sort­ed out—far from it—but I knew I want­ed to write a novel.

How­ev­er, when I com­pose a short sto­ry, and I have just been writ­ing a few of them, my sense of the plot begins with know­ing that the tale I intend to write will be short. That in turn informs my writing.

Yes, I could take the same idea and recal­i­brate it into some­thing longer (that has hap­pened) but most often, I choose not to.

I sus­pect it would be the same if you are a run­ner. If you intend to run a marathon, your thought process would be dif­fer­ent than if you were going to run a fifty-yard dash. Note that in both cas­es, you are run­ning, but you run in a dif­fer­ent way. And when the “Start” gun is sound­ed you know what you have to do.

3 thoughts on “Short story or marathon?”

  1. In an effort to get as many sell­able works under my belt, my agent and I have dis­cussed me writ­ing a short sto­ry for dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing every month. Jan­u­ary will be my first month. I real­ly like the sorter for­mat but you are right, the time table is less, the com­pli­ca­tion is less, but the desire to make it of qual­i­ty is the same. I would like to know where you park your short sto­ries? Antholo­gies? Do you ever try for magazines?

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  2. Eri­ka,

    My short sto­ries have gone to on request antholo­gies, but in the main I have cre­at­ed the­mat­ic col­lec­tions, two (one forth­com­ing) pub­lished by Can­dlewick, one by Houghton Mif­flin. Good luck.

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